


Someday We'll Know

by thecolourclear (afinch)



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Brotherly Love, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-13
Updated: 2006-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-06 22:51:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11045994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/pseuds/thecolourclear
Summary: It was a sign of how strained their relationship was, that Toby hadn't even called his brother or sisters to let them know that he'd won the election. He had figured his mother would have passed on the news, elated as she was. And here David was, telling of how two weeks after the Inauguration and he still didn't know that had been Toby's campaign.





	Someday We'll Know

**Author's Note:**

> written for raedbard's Rare Pairings FicAThon. Prompts were: The West Wing Episode Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, the object of a statue, and the lyric I serve my head up on a plate/It's only comfort, calling late --'Every Me and Every You', Placebo.

"Is he ok?" The tentative question comes over the phone and Toby sighs and rubs his head, debating how to answer the question. He and his brother never talk, well, not anymore, and the phone call was unexpected. He wasn't so surprised as to tell his brother that he shouldn't have called. He liked it actually, the chat with David. It was … relaxing in a way, to listen to David prattle on and on about whatever he was doing next. 

Toby rarely paid attention but he had the feeling that when he prattled on about the government, David was only listening. The topic had turned to the presidents falling ratings, and a speech that Toby had just written – and from there, the talk came back to Morris. After a pregnant pause, during which neither brother said anything, the soft voice of David's girlfriend could be heard, "David?"

"I should let you go," Toby says quickly, knowing he and his younger brother are so much alike David won't let the topic drop. "And …" he pauses, sighs, and before hanging up the phone, mutters, "Would you be?"

*****

His demons were shouting down his better angels. It was David who had said that to him first, they were together for a rare Thanksgiving holiday, about five years ago. He wasn't sure where David had said it, but at some point in the first weeks of the Bartlet presidency the words wouldn't leave his head. It took Toby another three weeks and another phone call to David to figure out why.

"Remember Thanksgiving a few years ago?" Toby asked, a rare smile creeping on his face as David laughed.

"You mean the only Thanksgiving I've seen you at since you were, what, sixteen?"

Toby grinned again, "Yeah, that one. What did you tell me about angels and demons?"

"It's a bad book, don't read it?" David smirked, flipping through the seven thousand page booklet that detailed the next NASA shuttle flight. "Come of it, I've a really bad book here you don't want to read either."

David's favourite game, dancing around the issue – he certainly didn't learn it from his older brother. His sisters, maybe, but Toby was never like that. Remember Thanksgiving. He'd started off easily enough. And now David was going to prattle on about whatever he was going to prattle on about. And Toby would listen. For now.

*****

Winter recess and Toby found himself standing idly outside his brother's house, waiting for the little bugger to come home and let him in. And when he came, Toby was going to rail about the moving the spare key that was normally hidden in the wind chime. David would laugh and tell his older brother that if he came over more often, he would know where the key was now hidden. 

As it was, there was no key, David had taunted Toby for the better part of an hour before finally admitting it, grinning the whole time, his face an almost a reverse replica of Toby's. "You know, Hannelore, Ruthie Jean and Miriam have their own keys, and don't need the spare."

"Hanna, RJ and Miri live, what – two blocks from here?" Toby shot back, good naturedly. He hadn't actually seen his brother in almost two years, losing elections had kept Toby at bay, and top secret NASA missions kept David busy. It was nice to slip back into something carefree. As much as their outer personalities differed so drastically, there was an inner sadness (for lack of a better word) in both of them that drew one to the other.

*****

It would be months later, the night that the president would be shot, that Toby would sit on the edge of his seat, watching CNN intently to see if anything had happened with the payload doors. He'd forgotten his brother was up there. It was almost an eerie payback for the story that David was now telling him. Now that Toby had actually won an election after all, David felt it would be no crime in relaying how he'd forgotten his brother was even working on the Bartlet campaign. 

"So Mrs. Feinstein comes up to me as I'm mowing the lawn – stop smirking at me and imagine that I actually, you know, work for once – so, I'm mowing the lawn and she comes up to me, totally beaming and starts screaming something about you. Well, I've no idea what, and now I'm panicked that something's happened to you and I'll look like an idiot in front of this woman who was like, in her eighties when we were ten –"  
Toby's smirk has grown into a grin and he raised his glass of gin to toast, "Cheers for the eighty year old babysitter my little brother had a crush on …" 

"Now, that's just cruel! So, I was mowing the lawn – !"

"You wanted to marry her!" Toby interrupted. "We should drink to that, then you can tell your story about how you forgot about the only brother you'll ever have and how he was busy trying to get someone elected."

"I didn't forget!" David feebly protested. "Ok, yes, I did, but I had a lot going on! And now the evil octogenarian is telling me about how our mother should be so proud to have two Jewish sons so accomplished, and that her and the rest of the Jewish community were so proud to know us. At least she didn't say children," David added, a bit sheepishly. 

"You faked it," Toby said, draining his gin. Of course David had, it was exactly what Toby would have done when faced with the ageless Mrs. Feinstein. Faked it and then sat and watched CNN for hours trying to glean the smallest piece of information. All of that panic instead of just picking up the phone – hey, Toby, what the hell happened? Whatever it is, congratulations, love you, bye. 

Toby didn't know how to feel hearing that his brother had forgotten about him and had to read the papers from two weeks before that to understand. It was a sign of how strained their relationship was, that Toby hadn't even called his brothers or sisters to let them know that he'd won the election. He had figured his mother would have passed on the news, elated as she was. And here David was, telling of how two weeks after the Inauguration and he still didn't know that had been Toby's campaign. Toby sighed and rubbed his head, placing his glass down and quietly announcing that he had to go and it had been a wonderful visit. David agrees.

*****

They led extremely different lives, lived in different parts of the country, moved in different circles. Then again, they had never been close as brothers, constantly trying to outdo one another in smartness. Toby would constantly pick apart his brothers language in his essays, and in return, David would pick apart whatever science thing Toby had to work on that week, or month, or day, or hour. They didn't measure their smartness in terms of GPA, no, they measured in who did better in what class. It pushed both of them to excel both in English and in Science, though both secretly harbored loathing for the subject the other so passionately lived.

It was a surprise when David called and out of the blue that rainy March day asked Toby to ghost a speech that David was going to give at the opening of a memorial for someone whose name Toby had already forgotten. Everyone was famous in Florida, after all. He agreed though, and set off to write, pulling up anything his science teachers had told him about the greatness of the pursuit of science. It was theft, yes, but this was a ghosted speech and Toby really just didn't care. 

David surprises him by inviting him out to hear the speech. Toby surprises him by agreeing.

*****

_We are taught to dream of impossible things so that we may give hope to our futures, to our children. We are taught to dream because there lingers in all of us a soul that yearns of the beauty of seeing a dream fulfilled. Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream", and Roland Terrence answered back, "So do I."_

Toby strains, trying to hear the end of the speech, the best parts of the speech – the stolen parts – but the roar of the crowd in the atrium of the RT Children's Space Camp drowns out the rest of the speech. Toby watches as the clapping dies down and he realizes his brother hasn't finished – he is waiting for something – that moment that Toby wrote into the speech that few speech deliverers ever actually find. His eyes find Toby's; he smiles proudly and, with eyes watering such as his brother's are, delivers the last five words –

_We are taught to dream_

*****

It was the small statue that interests Toby the most as he moves around the space camp. Small and hidden in a small corner, it was either not meant to be noticed, or simply forgotten. Toby thinks and settles on the latter. It is of a small child, reaching on tiptoe to touch something – Toby settles on the stars – with a look of fierce determination on his face.

"That's you," the soft voice says, startling Toby out of his thoughts.

"I'm sorry?"

"David meant to show you earlier, I'm sure he did," the petite blonde woman says, a bit nervously. It takes Toby a moment, but he realises this must be Anne, his brother's fiancée.

"Me?" he asks, too surprised to make a formal introduction. Again he stares at the statue.

"David said you and he were the only ones who knew what it meant," the woman – Anne – says softly. "I never pushed the matter, but it means a lot to David."

"Why?"

A seemingly simple question, but in it is contained so much. Why is it here? Why does David like it? Why did David have it (or have it made)? And from the why came others – who was the boy? What was he reaching for? What did David want Toby to see in it? Could his sisters see what it was as well? And finally, just why? Toby's head is swirling, but his face is blank as he stares at Anne, trying to find the answers to the questions he doesn't dare ask.

"Come on Toby, you remember," David says quietly. Toby jumps, he has no idea how long his brother has been watching him, and then him and Anne. The way David speaks, Toby knows it has been a while, perhaps for even as long as Toby was alone with the stature. "You do remember, don't you?"

With a face suddenly twisted with a rage of emotions, Toby nods, then offers a half smile, "Yes, I remember."


End file.
